Who Are You? I Really Want to Know.

The Who, one of my favorite classic rock bands but funny enough that exact question comes up a lot in my role as a Sandler trainer. Who are you?

One of the first things that we do with new clients at Sandler is an online behavioral assessment. There are a few reasons for this, but in short, it tells you and us more about who you are.

The assessment tells us things like their natural personality style and character traits. I say natural because we all hold the four personality styles inside of us, but there is one maybe two that we naturally use more than the others. Natural means it’s easy, we don’t have to think about it, it just happens. Most of us go through life in our natural states and are perfectly fine with that. We typically surround ourselves with like personalities, and any personalities we clash with, we just simply avoid. Easy enough, right?

They say the “magic” happens outside your comfort zone, but first, you have to acknowledge where that zone is. Assessments do just that. It’s basically like putting a big mirror in front of you that sees inside your thoughts and emotions. Why is this a powerful thing?

It’s two-fold. One is self-awareness. Going through the assessments helped me figure out why I make the decision that I do, why I care so much about other peoples’ opinion, and why I have such a hard time making a decision. I realized my personality style was stopping me from growing. I was always looking for approval from the outside and would use that as an indicator if I was good or not, which in itself is a really tough thing to handle when you are a sales person. Just being aware of this helped me adjust my selling behavior. I keep doing what works in this role, and I do my best to adjust my style to the person with whom I’m interacting. If it’s not natural, I have to make a conscious adjustment.

The second impact was on how I view other people. You know the old saying, “Treat others the way you want to be treated?” Sure, that’s the case if they are just like you, but the majority of people are not like you and want to be treated differently. So, why would you treat them just like you? That’s a big point. We were all raised by different people. We all had different influences in our lives, and we all have different memories inside of us. How can we treat all people the same when we’re just not? What’s important to you, may not be important to me. How you take in information could be completely different them me. We even have things like Primary Sensory Dominance. The majority of people are visuals, but there is also auditory and kinesthetic people. To those people, a visual representation means nothing; they would rather hear or even feel what you are trying to say.

Let me give you one more example. It’s a concept called OK and Not-OK. Studies have shown that upwards of 75% of the population is in this “Not-OK” category. That means something is not right with them. Maybe it’s a bad day, they had a fight with their spouse, or they just recently had a tragedy in the family? Being aware that the majority of people are in this Not-OK state gave me a lot more patience than I ever had before. As the guy cuts me off in traffic, instead of beeping my horn or worse, my first thoughts now are, “Wow, he must be having a crazy day, maybe he’s late for a meeting, or maybe he’s heading to the hospital? Whatever it is, I hope he gets there safe!” That is quite a shift, huh?

Being aware different personalities, character traits, sensory styles, and other frameworks help bring to light how different, unique and interesting each person you encounter is. I used to get frustrated when I felt someone didn’t think like me but now I appreciate and understand the differences. There is only one me! And, there is only one of them. The more I understand about who I am, the better I understand others and how I interact with them.

John Fazio, Jr. is a Partner at PEAK Sales Performance, LLC, an authorized Sandler Training center. His clients range from the single Entrepreneur all the way up to the Fortune 500 Company. They are typically going through a change, whether it is growth, a change in management, or just ready to go to the next level.
http://www.peaksalesperform.sandler.com